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"12. The really, really successful map and shovel salesmen buy large office buildings and sometimes have a hard time keeping up with demand for their services, requiring them to hire people and treat them well -- don't underestimate this."

Some of the other points kind of lead up to that -- the bit about buying offices and advertising claiming to employ all of the qualified people in a field (or at least implying). I wrote that hoping the reader would come to the same conclusion -- if it you don't have the skills to make it in IT, your best bet is probably to go get them, and trying to short circuit the process is likely to fail.

The conversation this came out of was with a person who is just starting out in IT and is completely daunted. Many of my friends come to me with get-rich-quick schemes. A dozen different ways I've argued for coding for love and letting the money follow. This is yet another argument for the same purpose. My main objection with this class of people is that they wind up talking about it a lot and doing very little, and this soaks up my time and energy just listening to them, or dispensing advice that indulges their fantasy, accomplishing nothing but entertaining the fantasy itself. Far less often people will come to me looking for ideas of books to read, training or vents to attend, and so on -- this sort of question would be far more productive for me to answer and the benefits could be applied in all sorts of way. Resigning ones self to work one's job is just one step closer to resolving to actually sit down and learn what one needs to know for one's new trade.